Jessamine Less was gutted like a fish.
She was fifty-four.
Her insides were spilling out all over her outsides, no matter how hard she tried to hold them back. This wasn't about her. She needed to be proud. She needed to be glad.
But all she felt was loss.
How many ways could you lose your child? Now, she learned, there were at least two.
Lucia had been born between the tides, after the Harvest and before the true Christmas. She was untouched by the spirit domain. Jessamine had done so many things wrong in her life, but Lucia couldn't be counted among them. Now she was all grown up and ready to face the world without her mother's care.
"Don't look at me like that," her daughter chided. "I'm moving north, not leaving for Mars, and I can't stay any longer. For one thing, Mel is going stir crazy being in the apartment all by herself—she's already called me three times this morning. For another, I start work on Monday. For a third, you have guests and you're keeping them waiting."
Jessamine had been aware of the first two points, but that third bit was news.
"Thanks for that, little spark," groused Shuhui. "You know that was meant to be a surprise."
Lucia giggled wickedly.
"Hey," she laughed, putting her hands up in mock defense, "whatever you adults get up to in the privacy of your own, newly child-free home is your own business. And now I don't have to hear any of it!"
Theirs was a house without shame, but a bit of heat still played across Jessamine's cheeks. It had grown difficult to keep their constant liaisons from overlapping with Lucia's sphere of awareness over the years, and it hadn't helped that she didn't leave home for college, preferring to attend a local technical school. But for all the nights that Jessamine had cursed her daughter for staying home and studying when she wanted to throw a raucous orgy, now that she was actually leaving, for real and forever, she scrambled for reasons to convince her to stay.
She had none, of course. Children leave. That was the way of things and it was good.
It wasn't like she was dying. Not like Silas.
"Oh, you haven't gone yet," chimed Will, bursting into the foyer with a bundle of manilla envelopes tucked precariously under his arm. "I was afraid I'd miss you. And now I've got to dash. These fucking contractors will be the death of me, I swear."
The clinic was expanding. Will had his eye on retirement but was determined to train a new crop of specialists to replace him in the years he had left. As he saw it, the mental health needs of their community were only growing, so he'd doubled their staff and was in the process of tripling their space, all to leave the world a better place than how he'd found it.
"You'll figure it out," Lucia encouraged. "I love you, Dad."
She gave him as big of a hug as she could without dislodging his documents. He gave her a kiss on the forehead, then gave Jessamine and Shuhui each a kiss on their cheeks, and then he was out the door. That was okay. It didn't hurt Jessamine every time he walked away, because she knew he was always coming back. She knew he'd rather be here, with her, then out there in the world—it was just that the world needed him more than she did, most of the time. She understood that kind of motivation.
Shuhui gave Jessamine's waist a supportive caress, then moved in to give their daughter a full-bodied hug. Lucia, who had grown broad and strong, was nearly a foot higher than Shuhui—especially in those heels—but it didn't matter. She always looked like a little girl when Shuhui held her, all her cold fierceness melting away in the thaw of her mother's love.
"I love you, Ma," she said, sounding as though she might cry a little, after all.
"I love you so much," Shuhui replied. "Now go on and get out of here. Be safe, but not too safe. Don't take shit from anyone, especially if they're paying you. Oh, and tell Melete that she'd better appreciate what she's got, because you're one of a kind, kid."
"I will," Lucia said with a smile. "I'll give her a smack on that ass you like so much, just for you."
If the offer was inappropriate, it didn't seem so to anyone present. Jessamine knew that the two of them had bonded over far racier things in the years since their daughter had vaulted into puberty and beyond. There could be nothing harmful about the way the suggestion made them both beam with shared delight, however scandalous it might seem from the outside.
Shuhui withdrew, clearing a space for Jessamine, but she stayed close and gave her a little wrinkle of her eyes that told her she wasn't going anywhere.
Jessamine and Lucia collided, chest to chest, no space or bad blood between them. There hadn't ever been, not really. They were such different beasts, or so they believed, like oil and water, but somewhere in their hearts they both knew that wasn't true. They repelled each other the way they did because they were so much the same. Jessamine saw in her the young woman she could have been, had Thusia never crossed her path, but there was no envy attached to that observation. She was relieved that she'd rid the world of the old spirits, if only because that meant that Lucia could never be cursed by one. Her first child could live out her life on her own terms, not bound by any fate but the one she made.
"You have to forgive yourself," Lucia whispered into her mother's ear. "It was his choice to go, to become what he became. And it was their choice to leave us, after. You didn't make their choices for them, any of them. Now you have to let them go. I love you, Mom. I want you to live."
A cold front brewed in Jessamine's chest. Behind her closed eyes, she stared down the white and the gold and the orange. Could they see this as well as she? This was what real love looked like. Not whatever they were. Not whatever they inflicted upon her.
She pushed her daughter away, nudging her baby bird from the nest.
"I'll try," said Jessamine. "You try, too."
"I will," Lucia agreed.
And then she was gone.
Shuhui held Jessamine until the storm clouds around her heart began to clear, letting through a few weak rays of sun. They kissed, a soft and sweet restorative, and Jessamine began to feel a little more like herself. It would come and go, she was certain, but she would make the most of it while she could.
She wasn't really losing Lucia. She could visit anytime.
"You didn't tell me we had guests," she said, curtly.
"No, I didn't," Shuhui concurred. "As I told our daughter, it was meant to be a surprise. Let's go out to the garden."
Jessamine let herself be led by the hand. In spite of her gloomy demeanor, it was a beautiful day, warm and summery with a light breeze and just a few patches of pale-white clouds that gently meandered across the blue sky above. The garden teemed with life, insects buzzing among the clusters of wildflowers, birds chirping in the nearby forest, all hungrily waiting for an opportunity to take their share of nature's bounty.
Two figures were seated at the table in the pavilion, drinking tea or coffee. That wasn't unusual, by itself, but it was strange that they were strangers. Jessamine scanned them for identifying details. He was tall and dark. She was small and fair. Both were dressed casually, him in a pink polo shirt and beige slacks, her in a short-sleeved floral-print dress that showed off her neck but hung all the way to her ankles. They were both very young—in fact, neither of the pair could be much older than her daughter, a fact which caused a sickly flutter in Jessamine's gut.
She reminded herself that Lucia was a consenting adult who was literally heading north to fuck her girlfriend senseless, so who were any of them to be judged? She wanted her mother to live. They both knew what that meant, even if they couldn't discuss it openly.
"Jessa, my love," said Shuhui, "I'd like to introduce Duncan and Eva, two of the finest up-and-coming minds in my employ. They started together at our West Coast branch, but after I witnessed their talents first hand, I couldn't help but invite them to join us here at headquarters, an offer they were both gracious enough to accept."
Duncan opened his mouth to offer some form of salutation, but Shuhui raised her hand and snapped her fingers, a soft, sharp sound that seemed to reverberate through the garden, its impact too large for its volume, as all things Shuhui were. The young couple's eyes went wide and eager at this signal. Any comments they had intended to make were swallowed by a heavy and obedient silence.
"Stand and present yourselves," Shuhui commanded.
"Yes, Domina," the pair said in eerie unison.
Quickly but in an orderly fashion, each of them finished their cups, dabbed their lips on cloth napkins, rose from the small table, and kicked off their shoes. There was a little gazebo in the center of the pavilion, and they moved to stand beneath its eaves as if mounting a stage. Then, they undressed. There was nothing particularly sensual or showy in their movements, but the affectation of casualness somehow made it that much more exciting to watch.
Eva's hands moved deftly across the buttons of her dress, allowing it to fall from her shoulders and onto the gazebo floor in one swift cascade. Her exposed skin was a galaxy of freckles and her body was toned and contoured in that particularly sculpted way that suggested she spent many a morning or evening at the gym. What little of her that remained concealed was covered in a three-piece set of lacy lingerie: a sparse bralette, thong panties, and a garter belt with matching fishnet stockings, all in a rich red-orange that echoed not just the short-cropped curls on her head, but also the fiery bush that spread up from her delta. Her pert nipples and her vulva—already dewy and unfurling—were a deeper shade of rose pink than the lace that framed them, but it was a pleasant sort of clash.
Duncan shucked his clothing just as calmly and easily, pulling the polo up over his head to reveal a soft expanse of deepest-brown tummy beneath a broad, almost overflowing chest. He didn't seem to adhere to the same fitness regimen as his partner, but that only gave him a healthy thickness around his middle, the kind of squish that made her want to sink her teeth in. As her gaze followed his roving hands, two facts caught her attention: first, that his dark nipples were framed by a matching bralette to Eva's, albeit in a pale lilac-blue, and second, that each of those nipples was pierced through with a silver bar.
Curious, Jessamine looked back to Eva while Duncan fumbled with his belt. She'd missed it in the distracting brightness of the midday sun, but Eva's nipples were similarly pierced, only with gold rings instead of silver bars in what could be a matter of preference but which, she suspected, was an act of exceedingly obvious symbolism. It was the sort of choice that had Shuhui written all over it—not that any of her professional work would be so pedestrian, but that kind of base humor tickled her. A hole and a pole, catalogued and labeled.
Now that he'd gotten his slacks off, Jessamine's focus returned to Duncan. As she expected, he wore the same garter belt, stockings, and panties as his companion, although his stockings were sheer and the panties proved much less effective at containing his wares than they did hers. His cock, still soft, was long and thick and looked ready to spring free of its hammock at the merest provocation. His ass was bigger than hers, too, something that Jessamine would be sure to appreciate fully as the day wore on.
"I found these two canoodling in a spare office," Shuhui explained while the two of them preened. "Believe it or not, they didn't know each other when we hired them, but it was apparently love at first sight and within weeks they could hardly keep their hands off of each other during work hours. Rather than disciplining them through official channels, I decided to take them under my wing."
"So that's what you meant by 'uncovering a lucrative business opportunity,' last time you were over there," Jessamine noted.
Shuhui gave her a little pinch on the ass, just in the place where it felt nicest.
"I didn't want to keep it from you," she sighed, "but with Luce's moving day on the horizon, I thought you might need the pick-me-up, so it seemed best to keep it a surprise—or near to."
"Tell me you didn't reassign them to the local office just so I could have a couple of new fucktoys," Jessamine muttered.
"Oh, no," Shuhui scoffed. "If that was all I wanted, we could've taken a vacation and saved the cost of their relocation. I wasn't lying when I said they were our best and brightest. It's still too soon for me to retire, but these two have given me my first chance in a long while to think that I might someday have successors."
Eva blushed furiously at this last comment. That she was demure didn't mean she was deaf. Duncan did a better job of pretending at indifference, but Jessamine still caught a glimmer of earned arrogance at the corners of his eyes.
Shuhui snapped her fingers again, signaling an inviolable command.
"You will address my Jessamine as 'Mistress,'" she instructed them, "and you will follow her orders like they were my own, without limit or duration. You have both been trained to serve well her needs, but should you need it, the release word is 'mercy,' or the sign of three. If you understand, speak no word and remove your panties."
Each of them bent at the waist without hesitation, sliding their panties down beneath their garters and over their knees. Duncan's freed cock swung like a pendulum between his legs and Eva's thighs came away slick and glittering. Jessamine had the sense in that moment that she could have knocked them over with a word, but she knew better than to squander a good time with impatience.
"What about you?" Jessamine asked her lover.
"I'm going to go inside, take a long bath, and have a cry," she said, trying to make it sound like it wasn't anything of note. "Our daughter moved out. I'm devastated. I'll join you when I'm done."
Jessamine laughed forlornly. That was Shuhui: as restrained in her sorrow as she was effusive in her joy. She wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, leaning down for a deep and insistent kiss.
"Thank you for my present," she murmured. "Go do what you need to. I'll see you soon."
Shuhui returned her kiss with two or three more before she finally left.
Duncan and Eva had not moved while Jessamine said goodbye, except in two small ways: his cock was straightening steadily upward and her cunt was spreading steadily outward. They got off on the waiting, it seemed. That tempted her to make them wait a little longer, but it wasn't her style.
"I take it you two are physically well-acquainted with each other?" she asked.
"Yes, Mistress," said Eva, softly, a little trill of nervousness underlining her tone.
"Good," said Jessamine. "Then you may get on your knees and suck his cock. Show me how he likes it."
Eva didn't bother to acknowledge this command, she just got to work, crashing to her knees with a little more force than seemed comfortable and running her hands up Duncan's stocking-clad calves and onward towards her prize. His cock bounced on contact and she caught it between her lips, sloppily inhaling him into her mouth and taking him all the way inside. Assuming that he grew as large as it appeared he might, she wouldn't be able to do that for very much longer, but her initial efforts were impressive indeed.
As much as she'd like to examine Eva's technique in greater detail, there was something that Jessamine needed to locate in the garden before she could join them. It didn't take long. The cart had been left in a shady corner, protected from the elements by a heavy canvas tarpaulin. It contained everything she might need to fully explore Shuhui's surprise accommodations, and yet she hesitated to go to it, knowing how it always made her feel.
The cart itself wasn't to blame. It was a sturdy, workmanlike thing, purloined from one of Shuhui's job sites when its work was done, and it served its new purpose adequately enough. The cart was guilty only by association with its predecessor, an elegant rolling cabinet that had been hand-crafted to meet her specific tastes and needs. That cabinet was lost to her, now, and had been so for years. Its maker had taken it with her when she left their home along with the other half of Jessamine's family.
She closed her eyes. The three pairs of unholy eyes stared back at her. She let them whip her with their fire and their glory. Their truth was seared again into the skin beneath her skin. She was not worthy of these gifts, though she must partake, lest she squander her lover's grace. When that familiar restless tension simmered in her loins, she shook off her bitter chains and made herself ready to perform.
Arrayed beneath the tarp was a fine selection of deviant implements, including but not limited to several bundles of tar-black rope, a studded leather paddle, an assortment of gags, plugs, and blindfolds, no fewer than a half dozen floggers of varying lengths and densities, and a long and slender rattan cane. There was also an outsize dildo that was oddly angular in shape and cast from shimmering silver silicone with a solid core. It had both a flared base and a neatly-grooved fuller down its center, albeit mostly for aesthetics, and was housed next to a worn-in leather harness. Naturally, she called it her Zweihänder, for it took at least two hands to fully appreciate its majesty.
The sound of someone gagging drew her attention back to the gazebo. As predicted, Duncan had grown too vast for Eva's small mouth to manage, and now she choked around him. To Jessamine's substantial gratification, the woman on her knees seemed to be loving every moment of her distress. Duncan tried to assist his partner, weaving his broad hands through her mane of curls and making space for her to withdraw, but she chased after him, refusing to let him escape even as her eyes watered and her cheeks turned red.
Jessamine wheeled the cart a little closer, its cargo unveiled. She knelt beside Eva and ran her hand along her mostly-naked backside, letting it glide through the cleft of her ass where a little pool of sweat had already begun to gather.
"May I?" Jessamine inquired.
"Of course, Mistress," Eva deferred, suppressing a cough but failing to stop a heavy line of drool from pouring over her lips. "What is ours is yours."
Jessamine caught the drool on her fingers before it hit the ground and rubbed it across her own lips like a balm. It tasted salty and fresh and earthy. It tasted like cock.
Eva blinked at her, apparently unsure what type of person her Domina had given her over to, but a curl in her friction-pinked lips indicated that she liked what she saw. To confirm this notion, Jessamine moved her hand further down, skipping over Eva's asshole and dredging through the sopping folds of her vulva. Her back and her toes curled and she didn't even try to suppress her sudden, yearning moan.
Jessamine didn't ask Duncan for his permission before she took the base of his cock in both her hands, but she looked him dead in the face as she wrapped her lips around his head. It wasn't as thick as some of the cocks she'd had in her time—Domingo was, of course, unparalleled in that regard—but it was longer than any she'd had in a long while, outstripping Will by at least the length of her thumb. He was also delicious. There was a lingering taste of Eva on him, but so much of what she'd licked from her lips was his particular flavor, musky like clay, clean but not too clean, raw and natural and begging to be consumed.
She swirled her tongue around him in her mouth, taking in no more than his head as she gently stroked his shaft, letting her jaw grow accustomed to his shape, attuning herself to his heft. Then, she drew him further in, showing off the gains of more than three decades of cocksucking. Where Eva had struggled and come up short, Jessamine found little challenge at all.
"Holy shit," Eva gasped. "Dunc, are you seeing this?"
"Yes, babe," he grunted. "I'm feeling it, too."
Jessamine moved her hands around his hips, cupping his ass and digging her fingertips into his perineum. Thus hands-free, she pursed her lips around him and began to fuck him with her throat. He pumped back into her with what little movement she allowed, grinding against her hands, haplessly urging himself towards a rapidly-approaching abyss. Eva, dumbstruck, nevertheless began to stroke herself—a lapse in discipline that Shuhui would no doubt have corrected, but what Shuhui didn't know wouldn't hurt her. She moved one hand up to absently tug at her own nipple, flicking the gold ring up and down, as her other palm rubbed circles around her mons.
Had she been more circumspect, Jessamine might have slowed down, but what was it Shuhui had said, before? They had both been trained to serve well her needs. In other words, they could keep up with her, whatever pace she set, so she might as well start at a sprint.
Duncan was remarkably quiet as he came, his low, huffing grunts replaced by a feathery rumble, and Jessamine felt her throat expand with his torrent of semen. She swallowed the first shot directly, then withdrew halfway, enough that she could taste his second and third volleys, sampling his piquant bouquet before guzzling it all down, refusing to let even a single drop of him past her lips. She was in control. She would show them what that looked like. This was the first lesson.
"Mistress," Eva gushed, as Jessamine let go of Duncan's half-deflated cock, "I know I'm speaking out of turn and I will accept whatever punishment you choose but I just have to tell you: that was so cool. How do you do that? Please teach me."
Jessamine laughed as her composure returned. All experience aside, it was still strenuous activity and she was a little out of shape.
"Breathe through your nose," she suggested, glibly. "The rest is just practice, the same as any other work. The more of it you do, the better at it you'll get."
Eva looked up at Duncan, who had seemed a bit woozy just a moment ago, but was starting to regain his balance.
"Every night!" she announced. "Starting... tomorrow."
Jessamine could tell that she wanted it even sooner, but she seemed to appropriately consider that an unwise to demand to make of either of them, given their present circumstances.
Duncan nodded, wordlessly. If he had more to say on the subject, he was either too out of sorts or too mindful of his new dominant to share them.
"You mentioned punishment?" Jessamine asked.
Eva flushed and nodded, maybe a bit too eagerly.
"Later, I think," Jessamine considered aloud, her patience an intentional disappointment. "For now, I'd like to be naked. You will make it so and you will show me how much you appreciate this opportunity in the process."
"Yes, Mistress!" Eva chirped.
"As you wish, Mistress," Duncan mumbled, a beat later.
She started from the bottom, he from the top. Duncan's fingers tucked under the hem of her blouse and pulled it carefully up and over her head. As he worked at the clasps of her bra, his lips trailed over her earlobe and chin, raining little kisses that culminated in his tongue slicking down the nape of her neck before his teeth sunk into the meat between her throat and her shoulder. Eva's palms went up the back of her legs, finding the hem of her panties and pulling them down before diving upwards, her mouth going straight to Jessamine's cunt beneath the pleated canopy of her long skirt. Jessamine buckled between their opposing points of attack, but they kept her steady and upright and continued on.
His teeth were sharp. Her tongue was unyielding. Their breaths were hot, above and below. In this overwhelming barrage of their mouthy sensations, she didn't even notice that her tits had been released from their fabric prison until Duncan's hand latched around one, his fingers neatly tightening around her distended nipple. That alone might have been enough to push her to the brink, but Eva chose that same moment to slip three fingers up inside of her cunt, sandwiching her clit between them and her tongue, and Jessamine's first orgasm of the day went off like a rocket.
She wasn't sure what it was that made situations like this hit so differently. Perhaps it was nothing more than novelty. These were different lips and different tongues. They touched her in ways that were subtly different, even inasmuch as they were the same. Every one of her lovers had their own sexual fingerprint, she might say, and discovering all their whorls and loops was its own special sort of entertainment. But she couldn't deny that the reason for her thrill might be shallower than that.
They had something to prove.
Will and Shuhui were nothing if not generous lovers. They treated her better than she had any right to expect. Who was she to ever ask for more when she had already been given so much? But, damn her, it wasn't like it used to be, before, when the others were still around. There hadn't been a spirit of competition between them, not exactly, but with all their combinations and permutations, every one of them was constantly inventing new patterns, constantly expanding their fingerprints.
Even now, she was lying. There had been a tacit competition between the members of her family. They all wanted to be the one who could satisfy her the most, the one to keep her terrors most at bay. They all loved her that much and she was a contemptible fool to deny it. They were her planets and she was their sun.
And then she took their son away.
Eva emerged from beneath Jessamine's skirt and pulled it down off her hips. Duncan lifted her by her waist so that she could pull that last garment out from under her feet. Jessamine was naked, now. She was exposed. She felt empty. At least she wasn't alone.
"Keep going," she grunted.
It wasn't much, as commands went, but it was all she could bring to bear and they were skilled enough to make up for her complacence. Duncan knelt beside Eva and said something unintelligible in her ear before he took up her previous post, spreading Jessamine's vulva with his broad tongue and pushing deep inside of her. Eva, in turn, moved around to Jessamine's backside and ran her own tongue along the outer curves of her ass, moving incrementally towards her center until she licked down between her cheeks and jammed it up into her asshole.
Jessamine tried to compliment them on their initiative, but her voice came out incoherently in a jumbled, gurgling howl. She supposed they got the message, because they didn't stop. They fucked her from both sides, his hands reaching around to dig into the flesh of her ass, her hands reaching up to cup her belly, two pairs of ten fingers, painting brushstrokes, light and dark, across the medium canvas of her body.
Her second climax hit even harder than the first, causing her ass to squeeze so tightly that Eva was forced to retreat with a bewildered gasp. Duncan, undeterred, kept swirling his tongue in and around her until she got up the nerve to push him back and away, nearly but not quite losing her balance on wobbly knees.
"Eva," she addressed her, "do you see the cart over there?"
"Yes, Mistress," she replied, leaping to her feet.
"Fetch me the silver strap-on and its harness," Jessamine commanded.
"I'd be happy to," Eva enthused. "Would you like me to put it on you?"
Jessamine nodded before reaching down to cup her hand around Duncan's still-wet chin.
"I am going to fuck you both with my Zweihänder," she told him. "Her first, then you. I want you to see the way it splits her open. I want you to imagine what it's going to do to you. I want you to come at the thought of how I'm going to fuck you with it—and I won't stop fucking her with it until you have. Do you understand?"
"I do, Mistress," he moaned. "May I touch myself while you fuck her?"
"No," she said, chuckling darkly. "You may not."
Eva, to her credit, only trembled a little as she fit the massive dildo through its o-ring and buckled the harness around Jessamine's hips. She tested the fit, ensuring it was tight and snug against her cunt, the better for the hard action to come. The Zweihänder's base was ribbed, and with each little adjustment, it snagged against her clit, sending little jolts through her loins. She loved this thing.
"Turn around," she instructed Eva. "Duncan, hold her by the wrists—and be sure to hold her tightly. I don't intend to be gentle."
They each did as they were told, Eva naturally bending at the waist in anticipation of Jessamine's approach, Duncan stepping back to give her space to stretch out. From this distance, Jessamine was better able to appreciate the finely-carved edges to her sweet, slight curves. Her ass defied gravity even as her tits succumbed to it, no part of her more than might fill your hand, but every bit looking a dream to squeeze. She had put a lot of work into her body and it showed. It would make taking her apart that much more enjoyable.
"Because you're first," Jessamine announced, "and because you have options on offer, I will let you choose how I fuck you. Do you want it in your cunt or in your ass?"
Jessamine punctuated the question with a hard slap on each of her ass-cheeks, an early challenge for Duncan's ability to take her weight as it was thrown about. He passed the test with flying colors, letting his charge wriggle and sway as she squealed with mixed pain and pleasure, but never letting her swing so far off center that her balance might falter.
"Do I only get to pick one?" asked Eva.
This time, Jessamine did punish her lack of immediate compliance, bringing her hand back down against her ass a rapid dozen more times. If Eva thought she'd been using her full strength before, she learned now that she was very much mistaken. Those hits had been playful. These hits were mean.
"Cunt!" she spluttered, midway through the barrage. And then again, when it abated, "Cunt, Mistress. Please, fuck my cunt."
Jessamine didn't waste time on praise. What came next would be reward enough. She drew forth her sword and ran its broad head through Eva's gnarled and dripping lips. They carried sufficient lubrication to polish the Zweihänder to gleaming. Jessamine steadied her breathing, giving Eva just enough time to grow impatient and unsure as she coiled to strike, and then she pierced her through the belly.
"Holy fuck!" Eva roared. "Holy fucking fuck! Oh my fuck—don't stop—fuck me! Fuck me!"
And so on.
For the first time that day, Jessamine was glad that her daughter was at least a couple hundred miles away by now. Pruriently, she wondered if she was as adept as her mother at making women scream. These lust-tinged thoughts were fleeting, however, as the engine inside her revved and her unquenchable desire took the wheel.
It wasn't that she didn't care whether or not Eva got hurt, it was that she trusted Shuhui. If Eva found herself in distress, she would call for mercy. If she could not speak, she would make the sign of three, however she could manage it. If Shuhui had trained her, there would be no doubt or hesitation. She would not allow herself to be carelessly broken. She knew how much she was worth. Shuhui never did things by half measures.
Shuhui's diligence meant that Jessamine could fully be the demon she believed herself to be. She could tear through Eva's resistance, push past her barriers, both real and perceived. She could use the girl like a doll and know that when they were finished, she would beg for it to be done to her all over again. This was true submission. This was true release. This was fucking in its most ascendant form.
Four or five minutes into Jessamine's relentless pounding, their bodies coated with sweat and ejaculate, something changed. Both Duncan and Eva had been holding on for dear life, riding out each wave of their mistress's aggressive love, pierced by her sword again and again and all over again. But just about then, they realized that she had set the conditions that would bring this chapter of their play to a close. She wasn't going to tire herself out. She would only stop when Duncan came. The problem was, neither of them could touch him. His cock, however hard, however drooling, could feel nothing but the garden air.
Duncan lifted his hips, hoping to bring himself in contact with Eva's tits, but he couldn't reach high enough and she couldn't bend low enough to make the connection. She didn't have enough cleavage to properly fuck, anyway, even if they could. He flexed his pelvic muscles, but no amount of that would be enough to induce orgasm without some other form of external stimulation. However hapless and helpless he felt, he wasn't a teenager and this wasn't a wet dream.
"Let go of her arms, Duncan," Jessamine commanded, a minute or so after that. "Hold her to your chest."
He did as he was told, careful not to let her collapse entirely. Her tits were squished against his chest and her rings dragged across his skin as his bars dug back into hers. Her ass waggled lewdly, parting and squelching with Jessamine's every return. Her arms were trapped between them, hands falling to either side of his cock. That could be their salvation.
"Please, Mistress," Duncan begged. "Command her to stroke me. I need to come."
"I've made no claim on Eva's hands," Jessamine teased. "She can do as she pleases. But have you considered her needs? How many times have you come, little dove?"
Eva shook her head. Even if she had been counting, she'd long lost track.
"Was it enough?" Jessamine pressed, thrusting particularly hard this time.
"Never!" Eva railed. "I want—more—but—"
She paused, only able to acknowledge one extraneous task at a time. She could end her agony whenever she wanted—but only if she wanted it to end. Right now, the silver sword inside her cunt was her everything. The rest was just noise. But she could make that noise go away if only she forced herself to pay attention, if only she tried a little harder. She wrapped both her hands around Duncan's iron cock and the bastard nearly came on contact.
"—but I want you to fuck him even more than that," she concluded.
The moment he sprayed his seed, distributing it in equal parts onto Eva's stomach and the floor of the gazebo, Jessamine slowed her pace to a crawl. Once her heartbeat began to hammer a little more gently, she withdrew, inch by inch, un-impaling the wench and easing her down onto the ground. The poor creature curled into a ball, spent beyond her spending, and giggled like one gone mad.
"Kneel, Duncan," Jessamine instructed.
"Are you going to knight me, Mistress?" he asked, even as he obeyed.
Had his second orgasm had ignited a spark in him that the first one had not? Was he the type who got more obstreperous the longer he spent under someone's thumb? Surely not. Shuhui would have fixed that in him or else she would never have introduced him to Jessamine. No, the most likely explanation was simply that he had a sense of humor.
"In a manner of speaking," she agreed.
She let her cock fall onto his right shoulder with a damp thud. When he bowed his head, just a little, she brought it across to the other shoulder, giving him a little tap on the cheek on her way by. Lastly, she presented it to him straight on and let him gratefully wrap his lips around it.
"I dub thee a Knight of Less," she intoned as he suckled. "Now stay right where you are."
She withdrew and moved around behind him, spreading his heels and kneeling between them. The Zweihänder swept down his back and divided his cheeks. He lifted his ass slightly, giving her space to maneuver beneath him. For a few heartbeats, their cocks rubbed together, his already on its way back to hardness, hers unceasingly rigid. In an unnecessary but ceremonial act of kindness, Jessamine spit into her palm and slathered it over her silver tip before she angled herself up and back and pressed into his puckered hole.
He accepted her with a whimper and the soft pop of expectant flesh. His body rolled forward, moving to give her a more direct route through him, but he arched back more and more with every inch until his shoulder blades crashed into Jessamine's ample tits, a cushion for the rise and fall of his heaving chest. She reached around and tugged at the bar through his nipple, locking him in place as she began to move in earnest. Her other hand snaked across his belly, hoping to cop a feel of her faux flesh as it rearranged his bowels, but maybe such things only happened in her imagination.
"Do I feel good, Mistress?" he husked.
It was an odd question for her to answer. She could not, of course, directly sense the ways in which his body pulsed and constricted around the silicone, but so much of him was crushed against her—beneath her hands, atop her chest, between her thighs—that it almost seemed as though she could, if only by feeling where there was an absence of feeling. She felt him in the negative space. And yes, he was good—but she couldn't tell him that. Not yet. Control.
"What do you think, Eva?" she asked, redirecting her question. "Does Duncan feel good around my cock?"
Eva, who had been watching them sideways from her fetal position, pulled herself upright to examine them more closely. She crossed the little space with impressive dexterity, pulling off her stockings and garter belt as she went, leaving her bottom half fully bare. Giving Jessamine a knavish wink as she did so, she gripped Duncan by his forelock and tipped his head back before she smothered his lips and nose with her cunt.
"Let me tell you what I know about our Duncan," she said, conspiratorially. "First, I know that when we met our Domina, he'd never had so much as a thumb up his bunghole. Second, I know that I've never met anyone so single-mindedly intent to improve his inner self—both literally and figuratively. And, I mean, look at me. I know a thing or two about self-improvement, so you should believe me when I tell you that what I've got going on at the surface? He's done more underneath. Third, I know that he's never come as hard as when I was fucking him in the ass last night in preparation for today and my strap-on wasn't half as large as yours. Oh, and I know he can hold his breath for about eighty seconds."
Eva pulled back, letting Duncan fill his lungs before putting him back between her legs.
"What I'm trying to say," she continued, "is that if he doesn't feel good, it's probably you, baby—I mean, Mistress—because the odds could not be tilted more in your favor. You get me? And, by the way, I don't think there's a single thing wrong with you."
Jessamine snorted. The list of what was wrong with her was longer than this pretty young thing could imagine—but seeing as that list both ended and began with the death of a child, she wasn't about to expose herself and ruin a good thing. They could both reside in her innocent fantasy, if only for a little while. It was a paradise where she didn't have to admit that the others had been right to leave her and that Will and Lucia had only stayed because they were trapped, bound to her by law and by blood. She could never figure out why Shuhui had chosen to stick around, as well, but she tried not to think about it too hard or too often.
She slipped her hand from Duncan's abdomen down to his cock and discovered, based on the sticky mess along his half-deflated length, that he must have climaxed at least once already and she'd missed it, just one more vibration in their undulating flesh. Had she been a crueler top, she might have scolded him, but since Eva had rendered him mute, it wasn't like he could've asked for permission, anyway. Light, with the rate at which she'd been rogering him, it was a wonder he hadn't tapped out.
Her hips ached. As good as the Zweihänder felt against her clit, she'd been too focused on maintaining her station to really enjoy the experience. Not for the first time, she wished she could fill him up with her own seed, if only to bring matters to a logical conclusion. Instead, they were trapped in this interminable cycle, her thrusting up, him grinding down, all building towards an inevitable anticlimax. She closed her eyes and begged the eyes within to hurt her. Jessamine prayed for a supernova. Maybe, if they burned hot enough, it would all just end.
"Mercy," said Shuhui, from somewhere at her side.
On reflex, Jessamine stopped moving entirely, as did Duncan. She blinked her eyes open and saw Eva take two steps back, giving her partner space to freely see and breathe.
"Eva, sweetie," Shuhui addressed her. "Help Duncan up—gently, now. The big shower is behind the second door down the nearest hall. Take your time. Rest your bodies. Join us when you're clean and comfortable."
"Yes, Domina," said Eva, though her instructions hadn't strictly been a command.
Jessamine watched them go in semi-stunned silence, feeling the pull as Duncan extracted the Zweihänder from his ass, but staying right where she was on the wooden platform. He favored her with a slight smile as Eva led him away, though Jessamine couldn't help but notice a slight limp in his gait.
Shuhui hovered in the space just beyond her peripheral vision until their playthings had taken leave of the garden. When they were gone, she stepped close. At the contact of her skin, Jessamine realized that Shuhui had neglected to put on any clothes after her bath, naughty thing. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, leaning down to lay a soft but firm kiss on Jessamine's forehead.
"I'm here, love," she whispered. "I'm with you, now."
"Why are you here, Shu?" asked Jessamine, more sharply than she had intended. "Why didn't you leave with the others? If it was for Lucy's sake, she's gone now. You don't have to stay, anymore."
Shuhui hauled Jessamine to her feet, favoring her extant leg but otherwise showing little trouble manhandling the woman who was half again her size. She sidestepped the Zweihänder, neatly avoiding its long reach, and undid the buckles of its harness, depositing the whole apparatus over the gazebo's railing. The sudden breeze against Jessamine's cunt made her shiver, though the effect was not unpleasant.
The smaller woman leaned up and kissed her partner again, long and lingering, with that little touch of tongue that she couldn't seem to resist. Shuhui wrapped her arms around Jessamine's waist and buried her face between her tits and said nothing at all. She just breathed, slow and steady, allowing Jessamine's pulse to gradually synchronize with hers.
"I'm serious," Jessamine insisted. "All our children are gone. Will can manage me on his own. And if he can't, well, I'll figure it out. If I can't learn to live on my own, then I don't deserve to."
Shuhui remained silent. You could almost imagine her to be asleep, except that her arms held just as tightly, intermittently squeezing that little bit harder whenever she felt her lover's muscles tense.
Jessamine wanted to hit her. She wanted to hurt her. And not like she'd wanted to go wild on Duncan and Eva. This wasn't a demon's desire, it was human and it was vile. She wanted to cause harm. Whatever it took to get her to speak. Whatever it took to get her to leave.
Whatever it took to free her from herself.
When Jessamine began to cry, it was not soft or quiet. She wailed and she shook. It had been years since she'd cried like this. Not since that evening on the beach, when Silas sent her home and didn't follow. She'd cried for days, weeks, months after, yes, but not like this. Not like now. It was out of control. Violent, even. It was nice. She'd had too much of control. The taste of dominance had soured on her tongue. She had tried to put herself back together for them, but she hadn't done it well enough or quickly enough. They knew it wasn't her fault. They knew. But they didn't believe. Her deranged sorrow had made it impossible. Perhaps if she hadn't tried, perhaps if she'd just fallen all the way apart, perhaps then they would have pitied her and through that pity found forgiveness. She would never know.
Somewhere in the midst of her breakdown, Shuhui managed to move her out of the gazebo and to lay her down in a bed of clover. They'd been out here longer than she thought and while night was still several hours off, warm colors had begun to paint over the sky's blue. Bands of orange and gold spread across the sky among the pure white strands of cloud. She didn't need to close her eyes. Her ghosts were all around her, threads spun through the very fabric of this mortal realm. But they were not the only thing that anchored her to this garden. A vision of beauty lay beside her among the green, imperfect but unmistakably whole, her complement, her queen.
"Jessamine," Shuhui cooed, "I love you more than anyone I have ever loved in all my years on this earth—and I have loved you for more than half of those many years. You are as much a part of what makes me who I am as my brilliant mind or my spectacular tits or my missing leg. Please, love, don't even dream of sending me away. I wouldn't know who I was without you by my side."
Jessamine flushed and opened her mouth to speak, but Shuhui leaned in and covered it over with a kiss.
"Stop," she hushed. "Stop that. Listen to me. Our son, the second child of your womb, was one of the bravest and wisest and most compassionate souls I have ever had the fortune to know. I am so proud that I had a part in raising him, though we both know he was like that from the day he was born. We needed him more than he needed us. He gave his life—he gave his everything—to give not just our world but all the worlds beyond our world a chance at a better future than the one he was born into. I will always feel his absence. I will always carry the pain of his loss. But I cannot be anything but grateful to him because he sent you back to me. Do you understand?"
No, she didn't.
Shuhui rolled on top of her, melding their flesh, light and dark, entwining their legs, hot and cold. Her lips latched onto Jessamine's nipple and her tongue danced in circles, just the way she knew she loved. Her fingers parted Jessamine's cunt and hooked beneath her lips, just the way that made her squirm. Her love wrapped around Jessamine's heart and it fluttered, just the way that told her it was real and true.
"Do you understand?" Shuhui repeated.
No, she really didn't. For so many years of her spirit-cursed life, she'd thought of Thusia as a goddess. She'd imagined her. It had haunted her dreams. But for just as long as that, she'd known a deeper truth, however much she'd tried to hide it from herself. If there was a goddess in her life, it was Shuhui. She was a gift made flesh, descended from whatever heaven must surely exist between the realms—and she was wasted on her. Who was she to have won a goddess's favor? What was she? What was she really? A soldier? A zealot? A gullible idiot?
"I know you didn't come, before," Shuhui continued.
Her fingers were moving faster, now. She spoke between little love-bites along Jessamine's chest and throat, her touches steadily building in force and depth.
"At least not once you got going," she amended. "I know what you're like when you aren't going to come. I know what you were thinking when I stopped you. No, don't ask me how. You don't need to ask me that. I know you better than anyone, Jessa. I know you so well that when I close my eyes, I sometimes I think I can see eyes staring back at me."
"Don't say that," Jessamine groaned. "I don't want that for you. Not that. Not you."
Shuhui's fingers flashed and flared, lightning and thunder in her cunt. She shimmied down, bringing her tongue and teeth and lips and breath across Jessamine's stomach and joining the action at her vulva. It was too much. It was just enough. Sparks flew and waves crashed and Jessamine's ass lifted itself off the ground with the force of her convulsions. Shuhui was the wind that caresses you until all your edges are smooth and she wound herself around her lover.
"Look at me, Jessamine," Shuhui commanded, taking her face in both her hands. "Look at my eyes."
Her eyes were green. Had Jessamine ever really noticed that her eyes were green? Not orange. Not gold. Not white. Green. There was no fire in those eyes. There was life.
Whatever cloyingly lovey words were prepared to emerge from Jessamine's mouth were cut short by the distinct sound of Eva screaming from inside the house. It was easy for Jessamine to recognize those screams—she'd caused them, the same way, not long earlier.
"Ah," clucked Shuhui. "I imagine we have Will to thank for that. I gave him specific instructions to intercept our guests should he arrive home while they were still inside the house. I wanted to keep you all to myself for as long as I could."
"Which one of them do you think is in her ass?" Jessamine wondered.
"I'd say Will," Shuhui remarked. "But you never know. Your Zweihänder might have inspired Eva to take on a bigger challenge. Did she tell you that Duncan had never been fucked in the ass before he met me?"
"She did," Jessamine laughed. "I'm guessing she left out the fact that she hadn't been, either."
"Got it in one," said Shuhui. "That was a good session. Two anal cherries in one night. She pretended to be scared so that he'd go first, but I think she just wanted to give him courage."
"Do you think they'll last?" asked Jessamine.
"Oh, for another few hours, at least," said Shuhui. "I didn't just train them for speed. Plus, you really do need to have a go at Duncan's cock. He's no Domingo, but he reaches all those hard-to-scratch places."
"That's not what I was asking," Jessamine grumbled.
"I know," Shuhui agreed. "But I don't know the answer to that. They seem like they're a good fit for each other, but who can say? They won't be joining our family, I can tell you that. They're too young for us, for one thing. I mean, fuck, they're barely older than Lucia. Good for play, bad for the home. But they're each other's star. They orbit around each other. There's no room for us in that kind of relationship. We're just comets, passing through."
Jessamine looked at Shuhui, embarrassed that she'd allowed herself to think for even a second that she was anything less than her life partner just because they only shared a mortgage and not a marriage license, just because they'd only raised their child together and not mixed their genes to make her, just because she'd grown up with Will and only met Shuhui in college, just because their union hadn't even been legal until after Lucia was born—and still wasn't, with Will involved.
"What am I going to do, now?" Jessamine whined.
Shuhui kissed her. And kissed her again. And then once again, just in case the first two didn't stick.
"What do you say we invite those three up to our bedroom and run them ragged before dinner," she suggested. "Then, after, you and I can go down to the basement and pull out your palette and easel. I know we've got at least a few blank canvases still in storage. It might not be what you want, long term, but it's worth a try, for now. And, hey, you get to look at me naked for a few more hours, so you can't really go wrong."
"Yeah," Jessamine accepted. "I'd like that."
And she did.